Day 27: The Hardest Grace (31 Days of Simple Truths)

There is no one in the world more difficult to show grace to than myself.

I can make allowances for your weaknesses, cover your flaws, forgive your mistakes. I can believe the best in you and speak to the good God sees in you again and again and again. I can tell you to not be so hard on yourself, to give yourself space to learn and grow and fail and try again.

It’s hard to show that same grace to me. But I’m learning.

Today I took deep breaths in the hard moments. I made space for reading stories even when it was inconvenient. I left some chores undone. I adjusted the hours I could spend working and the hours I needed to spent on homeschool.

It wasn’t a perfect day. There were definitely some rough patches. But it was mostly peaceful, and I was mostly not overwhelmed. And that is progress.

Here’s to showing ourselves more grace tomorrow.

On Being and Breathing

Image Source: CreationSwap.com

Another Monday morning has arrived.

I sit with my coffee, savoring the last remaining moments of silence, mindful of the distant sounds of little ones stirring.

I have filled my morning pages–dumped all the thoughts spinning through my head onto paper. I have updated my planner, reviewed my to do list for the day.

And I become aware of the beast lurking in the shadows, the Anxiety that wants to sink his claws into my day before it really begins. This week is too full already, an abnormally demanding and irregular schedule, thrown off course by the unwanted presence of medical tests and doctor appointments that I wish I could forget or erase from the calendar. But they are there, and they need to be if we are to find answers as to what has been troubling my little girl’s health this summer.

I breathe.

There is a deliberate choice in this moment–to become overwhelmed or to simply be. This choice will face me many more times today, many more times this week. I hope I choose well.

To simply be: to acknowledge what is beyond my control and then release it, to be as faithful as I know how with what I can control, to set my gaze on the Beauty and not on the Anxiety, to remember to breathe and pause for moments of silence in order to discern the voice of Hope from among all the others.

This quote was shared with me by someone, somewhere, many months ago, and it has become a constant reminder to still my heart and refocus my gaze:

The whole world roars with subtle whispers of [you could be great if you would just hustle a little more.] And God simply breathes: [Let Me be great. You just go and be.]  -Lori Harris

This is my choice today, to pull back from the hustle and lean into the Being–His Being where in turn I find my own.

I do not know what your Monday holds, if you are refreshed or if you are weary, if you are hopeful or if you are heavy. But may I offer this suggestion? Pause and breathe. Not merely the mindless breaths you will take as you do every day to ensure your survival. A deliberate moment of silencing all the other voices. A choice to breathe in grace and exhale the burdens. Do it as many times throughout your day as it takes. The nagging voices telling you that you are not enough unless you strive and do better and perform? Those are not the voices of One who loves you. When He calls you higher, He does it with an affirmation of your worth and a reminder of His greatness.

Breathe. Be. And may your week be filled with the beauty of grace.

Lifeline

I am weary in every sense of the word.

My heart feels like it has been squeezed and squeezed, and stretched and squeezed.

The last few weeks have brought a barrage of questions, emotions, conflicts, decisions, opportunities, revelations.  It is like the tiniest glimpse into what it must have been like to wrestle with God all through the night.

But tonight, I dragged my weary soul into His presence alongside beloved friends, covenant family.  And it never ceases to amaze me that no matter where you’ve been and I’ve been, we get together and cry out and He comes.

I have spent a lifetime trying to do enough, be enough.  But I get in His presence and am reminded that I am already enough because I am His.  Because I love Him and He cannot resist a heart that adores Him.  I may not be good enough to deserve it, but I am precious enough.

Every burden, fear, worry, hope, expectation, conflict, question – everything melts away when He wraps around me.  His presence is what sustains me through everything else that makes absolutely no sense.  And I know there is always someone who reads words like these and says, “But I can’t feel Him.  Why can’t I feel Him?”

And I can only say, dear heart, I have been there.  I have been in the moments where it seemed everyone was experiencing God but me.  I have been in the seasons where it seemed the only amazing, life-changing service was the one I missed.  I have walked through the times where the wounds were so great it seemed I would never be able to find Him in that place again.  I have known the heavens as brass and His voice as silent and His heart seemingly distant.

But I have learned to never stop chasing.  He is never far.  It does not always makes sense to me, but I know now I will find Him, how my heart will touch Him.  And you will too.  Be relentless.

Because His presence is our lifeline, our everything.  When we touch Him, we are whole.

Tonight I did the one thing that sets my heart on fire like no other – I sang to my Beloved.  He enfolded me with His gentleness and His grace.  He is here with me in my weariness, my wandering.  And I am left with this assurance in the midst of all my imperfections – He loves me.